The Glass Spider Tour

The Glass Spider Tour was launched in support of the Never Let Me Down album. The tour began in May 1987 and was preceded by a 2-week press tour that saw Bowie visit 9 countries throughout Europe and North America to drum up public interest in the tour.

The Glass Spider Tour was the first Bowie tour to visit Austria, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Wales. Through a sponsorship from Pepsi, the tour was intended to visit Russia and South America as well, but these plans were later cancelled. The tour was, at that point, the longest and most expensive tour Bowie had embarked upon in his career. At the time, the tour's elaborate set was called "the largest touring set ever".

Bowie conceived the tour as a theatrical show, and included spoken-word introductions to some songs, vignettes, and employed visuals including projected videos, theatrical lighting and stage props. On stage, Bowie was joined by guitarist Peter Frampton and a troupe of five dancers (choreographed by long-time Bowie collaborator Toni Basil).

With the theme "Rock stars vs Reality," the show was divided into two acts and an encore. The set list was modified over the course of the tour as Bowie dropped some of his newer material in favour of older songs from his

repertoire.

The tour was generally poorly received at the time for being overblown and pretentious. Despite the criticism, Bowie in 1991 remarked that this tour laid the groundwork for later successful theatrical tours by other artists, and the sets design and the shows integration of music and theatrics has inspired later acts by a variety of artists. Starting in the late 2000s, the tour began to collect accolades for its successes, and in 2010 the tour was named one of the top concert tour designs of all time.

The tour was financially successful and well-attended (being seen by perhaps as many as six million fans worldwide), but the poor critical reception of the album and tour led Bowie to not only abandon plans for other elaborate stage shows, but to reconsider his own motivations for making music - and in that sense the tour developed more and more rock orientated and became important for the later Tin Machine project 1989-92.

The band

David Bowie – vocals, guitar

Peter Frampton – guitar, vocals

Carlos Alomar – guitar

Carmine Rojas – bass guitar

Alan Childs – drums

Erdal Kizilcay – keyboards, trumpet, congas, violin

Richard Cottle – keyboards, saxophone

Tour dancers

Melissa Hurley

Constance Marie

Spazz Attack (Craig Allen Rothwell)

Viktor Manoel

Stephen Nichols

Toni Basil (choreography)

The songs

Bowie elected to play less well-known songs on the tour and avoided some of his bigger hits. He was eager to not repeat the formula that made the Serious Moonlight Tour a success, saying, "It seemed so easy. It was cheers from the word go. You know how to get a reaction – play Changes, Golden Years and they'd be up on their feet. You get the reaction, take the money and run away. It seemed too easy. I didn't want to do that again."

All but two songs (Too Dizzy and Shining Star (Makin' My Love)) from his album Never Let Me Down were played live during the tour. Songs performed during the tour were "chosen because they fit the performance" and fit Bowie's goal to make a show that was much more theatrical and had strong dramatic content. When he was asked how he was going to make his rock show "dramatic", he replied, "You'll be surprised what you can do with a 6-piece rock band and a stage and a couple of lights."

Several songs that Bowie had anticipated playing on the tour were ultimately dropped before rehearsals even started, including Space Oddity, Ricochet, Joe the Lion and Don't Look Down. Some songs that the band rehearsed were never played on the to

From The Man Who Sold the World

"All the Madmen"

From Aladdin Sane

"Time"

"The Jean Genie"

From Diamond Dogs

"Rebel Rebel"

"Big Brother"

From Young Americans

"Fame" (Bowie, John Lennon, Carlos Alomar)

"Young Americans"

From "Heroes"

"'Heroes'" (Bowie, Brian Eno)

"Sons of the Silent Age"

From Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

"Up the Hill Backwards"

"Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)"

"Fashion"

"Because You're Young"

"Scream Like a Baby"

From Let's Dance

"Modern Love"

"China Girl" (originally from The Idiot by Iggy Pop, written by Pop and Bowie)

"Let's Dance"

From Tonight

"Loving the Alien"

"Blue Jean"

"Dancing With the Big Boys" (Bowie, Pop, Carlos Alomar)

From Never Let Me Down

"Day-In Day-Out"

"Time Will Crawl"

"Beat of Your Drum"

"Never Let Me Down" (Bowie, Alomar)

"Zeroes"

"Glass Spider"

"New York's in Love"

"'87 and Cry"

"Bang Bang" (Pop, Ivan Kral)

"Shining Star"

Other songs:

"Absolute Beginners" from Absolute Beginners: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, written by Bowie)

"I Wanna Be Your Dog" (from The Stooges by The Stooges, written by Pop, Dave Alexander, Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton)